Richard A. Kirk | Visual Artist | Author
"there is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion" Sir Frances Bacon, Of Beauty, Essays" 1625
The Stranger Greets the Dawn, 2023, ink on artboard, 10" x 11.5" I finished this drawing on September 10. It started life as an endpaper illustration for a forthcoming book project. In the end we chose another image, so I expanded the this original drawing and rounded out the composition. It is very much in-line... Continue Reading →
Birdseye, 2022, ink on paper, 17" x 14" Tonight, I am sharing a newly completed personal piece called Birdseye. I worked on it, off and on, over the summer, in between some book illustration projects and revisions to my novel in progress. Earlier this week, I turned in the latter to my literary agent, so... Continue Reading →
This progress shot represents several hours of cross hatching using very fine brushes with diluted ink. It looks a little stark without the framing background elements but so far so good. My main goal for this building was to capture the weathered, patchy elements. I always forget how grotesquely time consuming this technique is, but... Continue Reading →
Twist, 2020, ink on paper, 9" x 9" This piece is called Twist. It was drawn for my other blog, And Ink in Unfailing Supplies, where I do a monthly drawing challenge with another artist based on a prompt phrase. For the rendering, I used a pen & nib, something I've been going back to... Continue Reading →
I hope everyone is doing okay. Today I'm posting a couple of things I did over the weekend. I hope you enjoy them. I found a little scribble in an old sketchbook and decided to turn it into a drawing. The watercolour gives the piece the feel of a children's book illustration. One of... Continue Reading →
One of the pieces I'm working on this fall is The Wedding of the Earth and Sky. It will be entirely stippled with my trusty Rapidograph pens. I am pleased with the progress so far. Apart from the pencilling, these images represent about 4-5 hours work thus far. I'm already penciling two more pieces in... Continue Reading →
I am offering 20% off original art on my web store until Sunday, May 19. This is a great opportunity to pick up a smaller original work for a great price. Several have already sold. I won't be offering sale prices again until the fall. Here is just one of the pieces currently available.
This is an iPhone snap of a watercolor I did a few weeks ago. I plan to do a version of it in oil in due course. It was necessary to suspend my use of oil for a while as the products I was using led to some pretty trippy - but ultimately not fun... Continue Reading →
Hot off the drawing table, a new ink drawing for the Antipodes Project originally started by artist Ben Tolman. Visit Joe MacGown's blog for a good background on the project. I really enjoy creating these intensely packed drawings. I should also mention that my drawing Hypnos is on display this weekend at Copro Gallery as... Continue Reading →
Every now and then on this blog I surface a drawing from the depths of my hard drive. This one, from 2003, was done at a time when I was playing with the idea of doing comics, or a comic anyway. Other things came along and the idea was abandoned, partially for the sake of... Continue Reading →
Richard A. Kirk | Visual Artist | Author 